It seems to indicate, that the lines “雄兔腳撲朔, 雌兔眼迷離” really describes rabbits in heat. Males, fuss around the female, while females, feign befuddlement. At which point, one can easily distinguish their sex by their deportment alone. However, when the rabbits are running along, it becomes impossible to tell their sex again.

Thinking about it, the sexual behavior of leporidae in courtship is rather similar to human animals too. Men get excited and fuss about, while women, play hard-to-get.

This poem is actually the last verse of the
Mulan ballad
(花木兰). Here's the complete ballad:

Basically, the entire Mulan fable stems from this ballad. Note the
ridiculousness of it. How can a girl, in military for 12 years, and
fellow soldiers do not realize that she is a female? If so, she must be very
unusual and manly. In modern times, she'd be a butcher dyke, or
medically and psychologically certified transsexual. However, this
fable went on and is kept in circulation, because the aspect of having
girls in military barrack as their equals is a eternal fantasy of men,
as can be seen in countless movies and fictions, where, very beautiful
girls with titillating breasts and ludicrous feminized war attires
that reveals much of their body, wielding swords or guns that can beat
men. (e.g. in the movie Conan, Xena (the warriar princess) TV opera,
countless Japanese animations, female assassins (Nikita, Kill Bill), G
I Jane, video games.) In reality, a female taking the job of killing is
extremely rare, and only started to have some minor roles in modern
times supported by technology, because guns and machinery made sheer
muscle power less necessary to do killings.

Men like these fantasies because it has no effect on reality. And,
the prospect of having sexy girls in the military is good. The hungry
soldiers truely need it. While the fair sex, for the most part of
human history, don't have a say in society because of the biologically
developed social structure. If consulted, women in general don't have
opinions on this one way or another. If anything, such fantasy
glorifies their sex and they like it fine.

There is also a lecherous version of the ballad based on homonyms (same number of chars and same rhyme). Author unknow.:

The original Mulan Ballad with each character linked to a dictionary and character etymology tree is on the zhongwen site at: zhongwen.com.

A English translation can be found at 〔http://utd500.utdallas.edu/~hairston/mulan.html〕, supposedly from The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry1978 By Hans H Frankel, Yale University Press, 1976.
Buy at amazon
I think it's pretty bad.

2004-04-01

Bumped into this limericky poem:

姑娘跨下一條溝,
一年四季水長流,
不見牛羊來吃草,
只見烏龜來洗頭。
(author unknown)

under the lass there's a trough,
moist'n'verdant all year long,
grazing cows and sheeps it doesn't,
nourish'n'wash turtle heads it does.
(translation by Xah Lee)